Managing Developers in an Agile World

When it comes to application lifecycle management, the challenge is becoming how to create an environment where diverse development approaches can be managed cooperatively. Right now, agile development methodologies are all the rage. After all, as a methodology agile development more closely resembles the way the creative mind of a developer wants to work. But more traditional waterfall approaches to application development are not going away any time soon because there are certain type of projects that inherently require a sequential approach.

The challenge, according to Mark Sarbiewski, senior director of products for Hewlett-Packard Software and Solutions, then becomes how to deploy an application lifecycle management system that is big enough to support multiple types of application development methodologies.

We've seen the recent rise of ALM offerings designed specifically for agile development. But Sarbiewski notes that HP already offers an Agile Accelerator module as part of its suite of ALM offerings, which the company will be imbuing with even more support for agile development methodologies in the coming months. That additional support for agile development, however, should not come at the expense of other methodologies or require IT organizations to support multiple ALM frameworks, he added.

Clearly, we're going through great changes in the way we develop applications in the enterprise, most of which are for the better. Agile development practices actually bring us much closer to developing applications in a way that reflects the rate of change that most businesses want to see as they try to become more responsive to customers. In many cases, that means slipstreaming new features and functions into applications on a monthly or quarterly basis.

The challenge for the IT management team that oversees these development projects is to find a way of managing these diverse approaches to developing applications without getting in the way of the creative minds that actually build them.

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